What Premadasa felt about Prabhakaran

Premadasa had always wanted to meet Prabhakaran face to face. He had read and heard all about him—a minor official’s son from Valvettiturai, leaving school at 15, joining up with the militants and getting involved in the killing of Mayor Duraiappah in Jaffna in 1972, eliminating his rivals, especially the TELO in 1981, training for guerilla warfare in south India, and then as leader of the LTTE taking on as he called it, “the fourth largest army in the world” in 1987.

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returned to the jungles also gave Prabhakaran an opportunity of making his input.

On the Sri Lankan side, the negotiating team was led by Minister A C S Hameed. He was supported by Ranjan Wijeratne and several other ministers and a team of officials who were changed as dictated by the agenda for the discussions. Premadasa handpicked the officials for the negotiations as well. They included General Sepals Attygalle, Secretary/Defence; Bernard Tilakaratne, Secretary Foreign Affairs; his Secretary Wijayadasa, and myself, advisor from the president's office. Ivan Samarawickrema came in when land issues were being discussed. Felix Dias Abeyesinghe, veteran of the former All Party Conference doubled-up as Coordinator and Secretary.

At the end of each day, a press release giving the public some idea of how the discussions went was issued, drafted by Dias Abeyesinghe and Balasingham. Premadasa kept in touch with the proceedings through daily briefings and met the LTTE team as and when necessary at his Sucharita office.

Agendas of the Two Sides

Getting the IPKF to withdraw from the country was the primary objective in round one of the talks. Balasingham spent much time dealing with the atrocities of the IPKF and the sufferings of the people of the north and east. This caused the impatient Ranjan Wijeratne, who had come to do some hard bargaining on a political settlement, say that what was going on was "not a dialogue but a monologue". State sponsored colonization and forced conscription of youth by the EPRLF for the Civilian Volunteer Force (CVF) which the IPKF was training were also issues on which much discussion was centred. Follow up on these by the government was quick.